Providing Mission-Critical Services over 5G Radio Access Network

5G is called to introduce a major transformation in communication network architectures with its transition to cloud native networks. This transformation will enable new unique service capabilities that will drive the development of innovative applications. But, for 5G being successful in this task, the identification of the vertical sectors’ requirements is of outmost importance in order to map them into the design of the network architecture. This paper proposes a novel Cloud-Enabled Radio Access Network (CE-RAN) architecture to support Public Safety services at the edge of the network. This proposal leverages Network Functions Virtualisation, Software Defined Networking and Mobile Edge Computing principles to provide Mission-Critical services through an isolated network slice. We suggest a CE-RAN architecture with two levels of cloudification to bring the service closer to the end user.